The Institution of Christian Religion

According to this meaning doth Peter say, that Christ rose again §11having loosed the sorrows of death,¹ of which it was impossible that he should be holden, or overcome. He doth not name it simply death; but he expresseth that the son of God was wrapped in the sorrows of death, which proceed from the curse and wrath of God, which is the original of death. For how small a matte• had it ben, carelessly and as it were, in sport to come forth to suffer death▪ But this was a true proof of his infinite mercy, not to shun that death which he so sore trembled at. And it is no doubt that ⟨image 179⟩the same is the Apostles meaning to teach, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he writeth:² that Christ was heard of his own Fear: some translate it Reverence or piety, but how unfitly, both the matter it self, and the very manner of speaking proveth. Christ therefore praying with tears and mighty cry, is heard of his own fear: not to be free from death, but not to be swallowed up of death as a sinner: because in that place he had but our person upon him. And truly there can be imagined no more dreadful bottomless depth, than for a man to feel himself forsaken and estranged from God, and not to be heard when he calleth upon him, even as if God himself had conspired to his destruction. Even thither we see that Christ was thrown down, so far that by enforcement of distress he was compelled to cry out:³ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? For whereas some would have it taken, that he so spake rather according to the opinion of other, than as he felt in himself: that in no case probable, forasmuch as it is evident, that this saying proceeded out of the very anguish of the bottom of his heart. Yet do we not mean thereby, that God was at any time his enemy or angry with him. For how could he be angry with his beloved son, upon whom his mind rested?⁴ Or how could Christ by his intercession appease his fathers wrath toward other, having him hatefully bent against himself? But this is our meaning: that he suffered the grievousness of Gods rigour, for that he being stricken and tormented with the hand of God, did feel all the tokens of God when he is angry and punisheth.